NEW YORK – CIC Health and Quest Diagnostics said on Monday that they are collaborating on SARS-CoV-2 testing for K-12 schools and summer camps and other programs.
Through the collaboration, Quest will augment CIC Health's lab network, expanding its capacity and allowing it to reach more students and summer program participants.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based CIC Health currently facilitates pooled COVID-19 testing for more than 80 school districts and 600 schools across 20 states. Secaucus, New Jersey-based Quest has the capacity to run 300,000 molecular COVID-19 tests per day across its roughly two dozen laboratories with the majority of results returned within a day.
"Through strategic collaboration, we can make testing easy, fast, and affordable so school systems across the country can open and operate safely," Tim Rowe, CEO and cofounder of CIC Health, said in a statement.
CIC and Quest are part of an initiative announced in March and spearheaded by the Rockefeller Foundation to provide guidance on COVID-19 testing for K-12 schools.
"All of us are eager to get back to school and camp as safely as possible, and COVID-19 testing is key,” said James Davis, executive vice president of general diagnostics for Quest. "Quest is at the forefront of COVID-19 testing, providing nearly 40 million molecular diagnostic tests since March 2020, and our collaboration with CIC Health is informed by this experience."
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.